McMaster University researchers validate a new treatment
approach that could help bring the benefits of Adoptive T-cell therapies to
patients with solid tumours

Adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) is
an emerging form of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own re-engineered
immune cells to eliminate their cancer. Although ACT is effective against
specific types of cancer, like certain blood cancers, these therapies are
ineffective against the majority of common tumours.

Researchers at McMaster
University are developing a new combination approach that could overcome the
limitations of current ACT, and bring the benefits of this promising therapy to
many more patients.

The approach, as recently
described in The Journal of Clinical
Investigation, combines ACT with
specially-designed vaccines, called oncolytic virus vaccines (OVVs), to bring
about the complete destruction of a solid tumour.

Dr. Scott Walsh, Postdoctoral
Fellow in Dr. Yonghong Wan’s lab at McMaster University and first author of the
publication, describes the “push and pull” mechanism behind their combination
approach.

“We found that oncolytic
viruses could stimulate the implanted T-cells to proliferate. In other words,
they could push the cancer-fighting
cells to multiply,” says Walsh. “Then we found that these viruses could also pull the cancer-fighting T-cells into
the core of the tumour, which simply could not be done with ACT alone.”

In this study, the research group
discovered that their ACT/OVV combination approach could engage the entire
immune system to eliminate solid tumours and generate a long-term tumour-resisting
effect in experimental animal models. Whereas current ACT can only kill
specific tumour cells, their approach was effective at eliminating the various
types of cells within solid tumours.

“Usually, ACT can only target
the tumour cells that have a specific set of molecular markers. This is a
problem because tumours can often shed these marked cells and return with a
vengeance,” Walsh says. “Our approach engages the immune system as a whole, not
just the re-engineered cells, to eliminate a broader variety of tumour cells
and prevent the tumour from coming back over the long term.”

To bring this new approach into
the next stage of development, the study group teamed up with experts across
the province through OICR’s
Immuno-oncology Translational Research Initiative. The team includes
researchers with deep immuno-oncology expertise and extensive commercialization
experience.

“Bringing this idea into the
next stage of development requires collaboration across areas of expertise,”
says Walsh, who holds a patent on the combination approach. “We’re looking
forward to building on our past successes and using our collective expertise to
move into more advanced animal models, and then onto clinical trials.”

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